


dangling feet by window-frame

by thethrillof



Series: if i had a heart [2]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Secret of Kells (2009)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Slavery, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-23 14:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethrillof/pseuds/thethrillof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>moments in their world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's strange, Gobber thinks, how the boy who hid an entire dragon for ages could be so unsubtle.

  
Nobody talks about it, really, but it's clear what's going on. The kindling of sparks that had been between Hiccup and Astrid now include their outlander thrall.

  
(Thrall in name only; he was treated like a freedman by the pair, and everyone else followed.)

  
Even Stoick sees it, and he lets it go on, even though he's clearly quietly uncomfortable. But fifteen years of near-silence between the father and son hasn't quite been pireced, even though they've had a few to patch things up.

So Gobber pulls Brendan into the forge mid-summer and says point-blank that everyone knows.

  
"Now, I don't care to know the details," he says as Brendan's face blanches. "but you'll have quite a few people after you if you hurt them, including me."

  
"Y-yes sir," he stammers, looking terrified. He glances wildly at the sharp things all around them.

  
Gobber lets out a deep sigh. "I'm not going to hurt you for it, lad. I don't mind. They can both make their own choices, and if you're included, I can deal with that."

  
Brendan gives him a strange look then. "You...don't think it's wrong?"

  
"It's unusual," he says with a shrug, "but some men have had more than one woman in the past--if Astrid wants two men, the only thing to wonder is why she picked another scrawny thing like you." He carefully avoids mentioning Hiccup.

  
The thrall looks a tad offended, but he's clearly more relieved than anything. "Th-thank you, sir."

  
"No need for that," Gobber says, waving him out. "Just remember what I said."

  
Brendan nods emphatically, and Gobber believes him.


	2. Chapter 2

Brendan wasn't used to being touched.

  
Brother Aidan used to ruffle his hair, Aisling used to lean against him or put her arm on him, and the Brothers used to settle their hands on his shoulder sometimes when he was working, but mostly he had lived without it.

  
Berk was a change.

  
Astrid leaned against him like Aisling had. Hiccup pressed a kiss to his forehead whenever he passed him by. The Twins pushed him around--gently. At least after they got into a fight with Astrid and she won handily. Fishlegs and Gobber both patted his back. Snotlout tugged Brendan around and sometimes felt for muscles on his arms, always tsking when they were still too small for him. Even Stoick sometimes did what the Brothers had--put a hand on his shoulder, but his Brothers and a Viking Cheif's hands felt very different. Even the dragons nuzzled up to him, Toothless and Stormfly using their wings and claws to carefully pull him closer when Hiccup and Astrid weren't around.

  
Hiccup and Astrid were the first he touched back, of course. They were the first he didn't fear. Before it was in intimate ways, even, he carefully handed things to Astrid and let their fingers touch, let Hiccup guide his hands when they worked on a new sattle together.

  
_"I like it,"_ he whispered in his own language.

  
"Hmm?" Hiccup looked at him in confusion.

  
"Nothing," he said quickly. But the thought settled over him like a woolen blanket, making him warm. He liked these strange, not-so frightening people and their thoughtless touches. And perhaps he would return the favor someday.


	3. Chapter 3

"Okay, we're sleeping downstairs," Astrid said. "There's a fire down there, and we can m-make a nest on the f-f-floor."

  
Hiccup and Brendan barely protested. They were all clad in their winter clothes, under a blanket, huddled together, and they couldn't tell if it was all of them or one of them shivering hard enough to shake the bed. Probably Brendan, but in truth, it was cold for even the northerners used to such subzero temperatures.

  
They didn't get out from under the blanket, instead convolutingly rolling off while still pressing against each other and stumbling down stairs that were too narrow for three people at once.

  
Toothless took one look at the trembling threesome and spat a flame into the hearth, spreading his wings and letting them gratefully collapse next to him. He scoffed at their thin hides and settled a wing over them like another blanket.

  
"Thanks," Hiccup murmured, curling against his dragon friend's side. Brendan settled in behind him, and Astrid decided she was the only one who could handle the slight chill on the edge.

  
After a few minutes of curling together, letting the warmth soak into their bones, Brendan sleepily commented, "Maybe we should do this every night. Until spring."

  
The other two humans let out hums of agreement. Toothless flicked an earfin--he didn't care either way.

  
Brendan slid deeper under the covers. _Alright then._


	4. Chapter 4

"Aisling!" Brendan swears he hears her laugh, and he runs through the trees. He's allowed in Berk's forest, alone, and he's glad.

  
He runs and runs and runs until he can barely breathe, until a stitch in his side makes him stop and lean against a nearby tree, wheezing. " _Aisling,"_ he whispers. _"Aisling?"_

  
Nothing.

  
It was stupid. Why would she be in a forest so far from Ireland? Simple. She would never be.

  
The pain from his side slowly fades, but he doesn't try to go back. He slides to the ground, ignoring the bits of bark that catch on the tunic he wears. It hurts his back. He doesn't care.

  
"Aisling," he whispers again, and his voice cracks. Because he isn't just thinking of her.

  
Home haunts his thoughts every day, but he's kept his thoughts from straying too far away from his new life for months. He feels like a different person, knowing dragons and Vikings and the touch of hidden skin, but he isn't. He's still Brendan. Brendan of Kells. The last from there, perhaps.

  
He knows he's lucky. He knows that most other Vikings aren't as kind or as rich as those of Berk. That he's more free in Berk than he ever was in Kells.

  
He knows his Uncle and Brothers might be mucking out horse stables until they're sick, might be in a mine somewhere until they're ready to collapse. He knows they might've been killed in the freezing winter by masters who didn't care enough to let them sleep by their fires or in their beds. He knows, but he tries not to think about it.

  
Alone in the forest, he can't help it. He doesn't want to help it.

  
He shoves himself to his knees and prays for them, as he does every night, quietly from beside the bed he shares with his friends and lovers and masters.

  
And then he cries for them. For his Uncle, his Brothers, for Kells and the Book and for Aisling, all left more alone than he.

* * *

They both look for Brendan when he doesn't come back in the afternoon.

  
Hiccup finds Brendan just before sunset, huddled underneath a pine, wetness trailing down his face.

He doesn't pry. He just sits next to him and waits.

  
Brendan opens his mouth, stops, closes it. Leans over, head resting on Hiccup's shoulder.

  
"I," he starts. Swallows hard. "I'm sorry if I worried you. Both of you."

"...It's alright."

  
"I miss my family," he blurts.

  
Hiccup puts an arm over his shoulder.

  
He breathes in hard, as if he wasn't expecting it, like the first few months of their...relationship. Whatever it was. Hiccup nearly takes it back, but then Brendan is wrapped around him, squeezing tightly.

  
"Sorry," he says, but Hiccup shakes his head.

  
"It's alright," he repeats. That isn't true, but it's all that he can come up with.

  
Astrid finds them holding each other just after dark.

  
She pulls them up together. She doesn't say anything, just holds their hands for a few moments more than she needs to. She can't see them, but she can hear Brendan's unsteady breathing.

  
They head back to Berk.

  
Hiccup settles Brendan in their bed, and he's asleep within minutes. Then he goes back downstairs, sits next to Astrid.

  
"So?" she asks.

  
Hiccup lifts a shoulder and tells her all he knows--that Brendan misses his family.

  
She stares into the mostly-empty cup in her hands. "Can't do much about that yet."

  
"Yet," Hiccup says, in a tone that didn't really sound questioning.

  
"It's been months, and we don't even know their names. We should learn them. And next time we go to trade..."

  
"We'll ask around."


	5. Chapter 5

He bought the boy on impulse.

Although perhaps that word--impulse--would imply that he regretted it. Which he didn't, and he wouldn't, even when the boy became involved with Hiccup and Astrid.

He was out getting medicinal herbs that Gothi was too old to fetch by herself anymore. He didn't mind, since it was a good chance to get caught up with the other tribes' news, and to perhaps get a few things for himself.

Thralls weren't a thing in Berk, simply because they ended up dying so easily, being weak and not of Viking stock. The winters and dragons did them in, and they were an all but forgotten bit of history, except when they stumbled across it on the trading place. Stoick had only seen three in his lifetime, and he tactfully avoided the place where the thralls were bound.

Until he saw the boy.

The hair was too bright, the eyes the wrong color, the physique even too frail--but his face, the look of terror and pain and just a spark of something else in his eyes, made Stoick think of his son.

He looked at the ropes and the boy's shaking, and he was negotiating the price before he really thought about what he was doing. And then he was the owner of the first thrall of Berk in at least four generations.

He decided what to do on the way back, feeling the boy pressed against him in fear of falling. Hiccup and Astrid had just moved into a new home; Hiccup was always busy with his plans and his dragons, Astrid was busy with her dragon and helping Hiccup with his plans and being groomed to become Gothi's successor. Hiccup had left some old clothes behind, and the boy could use those to keep warm. He would be a helping hand around the house when his masters were too busy. Yes, things would turn out alright.


	6. Chapter 6

Hiccup's up at the crack of dawn, ready to fly from the sound of feet on the roof. Toothless has elected to say out in the last few days, mildly annoyed at the new human that took his place next to the hearth. Not that he needs it; he's a dragon from, Hiccup thinks, even further north than Berk, and he can handle the cold. It's pretty much just the principle of the thing.

For a few brilliant minutes, they fly through the air as one. But all too quickly they have to go home.

The boy pretends to sleep when they come back into the house, but he can't quite close his eyes quickly enough for them not to catch it.

Toothless doesn't care, he just wants his fish, but Hiccup can feel those bright blue eyes boring holes in the back of his head when he walks past.

_Gods._

It's been a week since the boy was dropped into their lives. They've managed to learn his name and decided to use it instead of coming up with something on their own, and they've taught him not to run every time Toothless comes inside or Stormfly peers in through the front door. Or rather, Astrid has.

Hiccup knows it isn't his fault, really, what his father does, or that Brendan was taken from wherever he's from, but that doesn't stop guilt from welling up in his chest every time he looks at the boy.

So he just...tries not to. Stays upstairs when he has to be home, stays outside as much as he can.

Astrid doesn't like it. "He's ours, whether we like it or not," she said the night before, just as they were falling asleep. "He's not just going to go away."

And that was true. Hiccup knew that there were others that maybe could take care of him...but that felt wrong, treating him like a sword to be given away. An object. Even if, by the old laws, he was.

Hiccup mutters a curse and stirs up the coals in the hearth. The heap of furs next to it shifts a little.

He tosses fish to Toothless, who vanishes out the door with a flick of an earfin, makes an extra helping of oatmeal. When he's finished, he sets a bowl next to Brendan, and for the first time, doesn't find something else to do and sits across from him.

There's a long silence where all there is is the sound of scraping and quiet chewing from himself, but then an eye blinks open. Then the other. And then Brendan is cautiously sitting up and staring at him.

Hiccup averts his eyes and gestures vaguely towards the bowl. Before long they're both silently eating together.

Astrid comes down a few minutes later, half asleep, though her eyes open wider once she sees the pair in front of her.

She grabs her own bowl and casually stations herself next to the hearth as well, across from Brendan and not too far from Hiccup.

Hiccup and Astrid talk about anything that comes to mind. How their dragons are getting on, which fish they preferred, which fish Hiccup and Astrid themselves preferred, whatever, keeping their voices from getting too loud.

Around a conversation about types of dragon fire, Brendan somehow finds his way from across the hearth to halfway around it, leaving his little nest of fur entirely. The clasp of the collar shines in the light, and Hiccup's voice sputters. He glances toward the door, and Astrid grabs his hand and shakes her head.

"You can handle dragons, Hiccup. You can handle him, too," she says, keeping her voice even.

"...Yeah," he replies, even though he doesn't really believe it.

They finish the meal together quietly as it started.

Hiccup really does have to leave for a bit, meeting with Gobber, but he comes back right after. Astrid is out herself, and at first he thinks Brendan went with her, even though he hadn't gone more than a few feet from the house since getting the collar. Then he looks up, and Brendan is standing on the stairs near the top, looking terrified.

"You're just coming down, aren't you," Hiccup says, keeping his voice quiet. There really wasn't any reason for him to be frightened--unless he'd messed with Hiccup's personal Night Fury models and Toothless tailfin plans. He starts up the stairs to check.

Brendan flattens himself against the wall. As soon as Hiccup is in the room, he goes down the stairs at a dead run.

As suspected, nothing was wrong. A few drawings of Toothless were moved a little, but he wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been looking for something like that.

He goes back down and spots Brendan sitting on his furs, head bowed and shaking a little. "It's alright," he says gently.

Brendan's head whips up and his eyes are filled with tears. He stutters out something in his own language, an apology or a frightened plea, and Hiccup has no idea what to do. So he just stops and sits down on the last step, holding his hands up in the universal (he hopes) sign for 'I'm unarmed'.

"It's alright," he says again. Then he has an idea, runs up the stairs, grabs a sketch he doesn't need, and carefully holds it out to Brendan.

Blue eyes flick from the paper to his face and back.

Very carefully, the paper is tugged from Hiccup's hands. He says something.

Hiccup says, "You're welcome," and smiles a little.

Brendan smiles back.


	7. Chapter 7

He dreams of standing stones and songs. He dreams of doe and silver salmon, of black and white wolves with green eyes. He dreams of chalk within his hand, and scraping it over slate, and the lines form the hair of a girl sitting on a branch and smiling and saying _come here, Brendan, come here!_

  
He awakens with tears spilling down his face and a hand reaching to touch her own in the dark.


	8. Chapter 8

Astrid lies in the middle, which means she's normally clung to by Brendan. Usually, that isn't a problem.

  
Usually, the air isn't hot as a Nadder's flame, either.

  
She tries to untangle him without waking him or Hiccup. At least Hiccup's just gone on an inventing spree, which means this was the first time he's slept in a few days. It would take the end of the world, or a bellow from Toothless, to wake him up.

  
Brendan doen't awaken, but he doesn't let go. Instead he just clings tighter.

  
Fighting the urge to growl, she ends up just pushing against him. For a moment it seems to work--then he groans, turns, and falls of the bed.

  
Astrid winces and rolls to see him splayed out on the floor, blinking, eyes watering. _Oh Hel._

  
She sticks an arm out where he can grab it. After a moment, he does. He's still light enough that she can lift him without much trouble.

  
Still making sure to be quiet, she pulls him to her chest, kisses his forehead, and lays him back down.

  
Apparently he sees this as permission to start cuddling again.

  
When he's on the edge of sleep, she excuses herself to go to the outhouse. She doesn't really need to go, but at least then she'll get a break.

  
When she gets back, Brendan's moved almost all the way across the bed and is clinging to Hiccup, whose brow is slightly furrowed.

  
She ends up sleeping on the floor where it's nice and cool.


	9. Chapter 9

The grass and leaves look almost silver in the moonlight. Their bodies quickly match it as they slide their clothes off in the heat.

  
It's about experiencing the breeze over parts that haven't been touched by it before. It's about the feeling of nature, and tickling, and kisses on stomachs and thighs and backs. It's about laughing and sitting and talking with wandering fingers, and the startled leaping at the sound of an owl and laughing.

  
I love you, they say through every action and look and whisper. And touch. It isn't about sex...but they reach that point before dawn, moaning and rocking and Brendan's tongue licking Astrid and Hiccup thrusting inside him under the rippling gaze of the moon.

  
_I love you, I love you, I love you. Both._


	10. Chapter 10

Sometimes, on scrap paper that Hiccup doesn't need anymore, Brendan writes letters. They usually aren't much.

  
_I'm alive. I hope you are too. I miss you all. --Brendan of Kells and Berk_

  
He knows in his heart they won't go anywhere, but still he ties them to driftwood and sends them off to sea.

 

Hiccup and Astrid find out eventually. They share a look, and then they help construct containers that won't sink in the storms.

  
He thanks them, but they say they don't need it. They hold him tightly every time they send one off together, and he prays that this time, this time it'll meet one of his Brothers.


	11. Chapter 11

A great figure steps up beside him.

 

"Thor is racing far tonight," Stoick says gruffly.

 

Brendan nods, keeping his gaze on the clouds and not on the chief beside him. Perhaps a sign of weakness, but he certainly doesn't feel strong.

 

The sky is laced with lightning, the thunder roars so loud he can feel it in his stomach.

  
Hiccup and Astrid are hunting Skrill. Well, not just them, but he can't recall who else went up. He's scared. He's seen what lightning does to trees. He can imagine clearer than day Hiccup and Astrid falling, skin charred and blackened, into the roiling sea below.

 

His fists clench by his sides.

 

He asked them not to. Or to bring him. But he didn't have a dragon, and this was going to be their best chance to see the lightning-fond dragons up close. Toothless had nudged him, he and Hiccup insisting that they would be able to outfly any danger, but Brendan is sick with fear regardless.

 

"He rides a Night Fury," Stoick says abruptly. "Offspring of Lightning and Death itself. He--they'll be fine." His voice doesn't crack, doesn't even waver, but Brendan is suddenly concious of something inside it.

 

He realizes that Stoick is as afraid for Hiccup as Brendan himself.

 

He lifts a hand. Hesitates. Gently presses it against the muscles of Stoick's arm.

 

His head jerks around at the unexpected touch. Brendan sees the rainsoaked beard and horns atop his head out of the corner of his eye.

 

His hand is shrugged off, but Stoick's massive one settles on his shoulder for a moment.

 

They wordlessly watch the storm together, waiting for the ones they love to come back.


	12. Chapter 12

Astrid is better with actions than with words. 

  
She leaves bruises and cracked bones on fools who insult her Hiccup or who look down on her Brendan, gives them a symphony of yelps and howls and screams to the few cruel enough or stupid enough to attempt actual harm. They don't always like it, but she truly does.

  
She weaves her fingers with her boys', leaves them gifts of shining Nadder scales and crude drawings and flowers. She leans against them, she touches them, she pushes them towards each other and tugs them to her for a kiss.

  
She licks blood from split lips from their clumsy accidents, leaves marks from her teeth on their necks, digs her nails into their backs and chests.

  
They love her in spite of it, or maybe because of it.


	13. Chapter 13

Brendan weaves them crowns of leaves and flowers. He says they remind him of someone from home. They don't really get it, but Astrid and Hiccup accept them with grace. They make one for him together, and the three wander around the village matching.

  
They get a few weird looks for it, but it takes only one balled fist from Astrid for any negative comments to be witheld.

  
It ends up inspiring a trend, and some of the people of Berk were found with a leaf or a flower woven into their braids for quite a few years afterward.


	14. Chapter 14

"What's that?"

  
Hiccup cracks an eye open. Astrid's head is a silhouette against the sun above him. As is her hand, which points beyond the shoreline.

  
Hiccup sits up, wondering if she sees a dragon, or a ship. Instead he spots a log, and a blur of white clinging to it.

  
They watch as it slowly drifts to shore, almost directly at their feet.

  
The cat daintily steps onto the sand and shoots them a dirty look, as if it was their fault she's so inconvenienced.

  
Stupified, they don't move until she walks out of sight.

  
They look at each other.

  
"Did that...just happen?"

  
"...Yeah, it did."


End file.
